If the reward is a year in the future, it should be set at about (5*(1+1.5%)) = USD 5.075. That is called "time value of money" - i.e. USD 5 to be received a year in the future is not as valuable as USD 5 in your pocket here and now. The difference is what your USD 5 would grow to, given the current (admittedly pathetic) level of interest rates.
Hate to see a fellow Slashdotter cheated...
We have been in talks with MandrakeSoft for a couple of months now, for a possible investment into the company.
We recently pulled away because while the current management can very well be geniuses in their fields, they are CLUELESS about management and PATHETICALLY CLUELESS about finance.
I cannot give specific examples, but suffice it to say that their marketing documents with which they sought investors to their recent (incomplete) capital increase was hilarious, and did not even have Balance Sheet projections. Their Income Statement projections are wrong - they say most of the USD 5 mn intended capital increase will go to hiring people, but salaries do NOT increase in the projections, for crying out loud!
I spoke many times to that "new CEO" you have high hopes about. He is clueless about how to make money with this company (sorry but that is the goal of an investment like the one we were contemplating). He does not have a business plan.
We actually suggested we could buy off the company from them - be majority shareholders, decide on a business plan, execute it. They refused.
I work in finance and I have a PC at work. I am thinking of the iBook for my personal use - I expect to do quite a bit of writing on it, work on photos, download music, burn cds, etc...
AppleWorks is a perfectly competent office application if you don't need all the features of Office
I will use iBook for personal stuff, but it would be nice to be able to work on it if and when necessary. Most files I create are.doc and.xls, but I do quite a bit of reading on.pdf and some on.ppt. Can I work with them all on iBook?
One last question: I kind of remember that compatibility issues were solved a way back, but is there any problem at all between documents saved in PC and Mac? Save in one, open in the other, etc?
I have been a computer user since I laid my hands on a Sinclair Spectrum 23 years ago. I have never considered an Apple before today. Not that this article rocked my world, but I twiddled around with them in a shop today and thought I could live with it.
The thing is, I do not know much about how important the differences are between Mac and PC. That's a risk for me.
I would appreciate it if you guys could comment on how difficult a defection to Apple could be for me.
You probably don't have many (if any at all) of the cells you had when you were born, so you've been mostly disintegrated many times, you just didn't notice it.
Not sure if this is so significant in the problem of consciousness and its continuity, but after the age of 18 or so you do not make new brain cells.
On a serious note, this doesn't surprise me too much. Redheads are well known for having extremely sensitive skin. (...) most redheads go straight from pasty-white to fire-engine red; freckles (another sensitivity based reaction to the sun) are more common among redheads than folks with locks of other colors. So it seems logical that this would extrapolate to other areas of pain and sensitivity.
Not so sure about that. Redheads' (and light blonds') inability to tan has more to do with their lack of melatonin - the stuff that makes your skin go dark. I don't think low melatonin (or lack thereof) has anything to do with nerve endings or them being closer to the surface, which in my mind would more closely be associated with higher sensitivity to pain.
I think you are pushing it a little. Your theory does not explain my case at all, nor why my brother has perfect eyesight and you are stipulating I might be traumatized by too much love as a child (for god's sake) rather than accept there might be a problem with your theory.
I get the feeling you are under the impression that I am American. I am not. I was brought up in a loving family. My parents are still together and they hold hands walking down the street. The affection is there. I doubt very highly indeed that a lack of caring, touching, or affection was the reason for the early myopia I was cursed with as a child.
I have have never lived in the US and hence was not exposed to the sort of life you are describing. My brother, however, studied in UPENN, worked in Manhattan for two years, and is now doing his MBA in Harvard. If anyone is subjected to the difficulties in American way of life, I guess he is.
He has perfect sight in both eyes.
The difference between me and my brother, in my humble opinion, is that I was reading encyclopedias as a child, while his interests were more in the "lego" domain:)
It sounds like you wear these lenses 24 hrs a day - every day. Doesn't this cause a problem in the long term? It seems to me the part of the eye where your lens is glued to needs air from time to time.
I have been wearing contact lenses since the age of 8, and by now, I don't really think of it as a drag. Still, I am curious about this ortho-k thing.
It is not exercise that cures myopia; it is the awareness of inner conflict that comes from the exercise. It is possible to exercise without becoming more aware; someone doing that would not see improvement.
Please... Is this for real? Are you asking/. to trust and believe this voodoo crap, putting aside all we know about myopia being the result of the shape of the eye (too long or too short)?
OK, I find interesting, and even credible, the theory that myopia is caused by muscle tension, after all, it does not seem impossible that tense muscles could eventually change the shape of the eye. (high correlation between obsessive reading and bad eyesight comes to mind). However, I will put a bullet through my rational brain before I entertain the thought that my myopia that started at the age of 7 was caused by an excessively tense lifestyle in elementary school!:)
Just curious: Could you explain how older people's eyesight deteriorate? Is that due to higher stress levels after a certain age? And how about near-sighted children? Too much stress in kindergarten?
There must be some reason why a mass of people would oppose stem cell research...
Not necessarily true. There have been numerous times in history when "a mass of people" supported certain views for no good reason whatsoever.
Example: Witch hunts of the Middle Ages. Everybody believed in witches and lonely women with moles on their faces and an effection for cats were burnt alive by the thousands. Did the fact that "a mass of people" believed there were witches around to be lit afire made their view correct or even rational? Nope.
It is sad but true - in many instances, masses of people follow leaders who are not the most open-minded and rational people on the planet. They believe, because they do not know any better.
I remember a book in which a quite plausible theory was proposed for the raison d'etre of the shafts in Egyptian pyramids - to lead the soul of the deceased king out towards a specific destination in the skies.
The book first juxtaposes our view of the sky with the map of Egypt, positioning the Milky Way over the river Nile. Interesting to see is that the three great pyramids coincide with the three stars in the "belt" in the Orion - remember how the two pyramids are aligned but the third is slightly off? Well, so are the stars in Orion's Belt. Another interesting point is that how so many of the pyramids (you know there are MANY of them) coincide with the stars on the map.
So it seems that the Egyptians positioned the pyramids to represent stars in the night sky.
Now the shafts - If we look at a cross-section of the pyramids at the shafts, they originate at the pharoah's chamber and go out towards the sky. The book goes on to show the studies that suggest that at the time when those pyramids and hence the shafts were constructed, the Orion constellation was at that angle.
If this theory is correct, than it seems the shafts in the pyramids are meant to give way to the soul of the deceased towards the Orion constellation.
The book was titled "The Orion Mystery" and the author is Robert Bauval. Neither this book nor I intend to make any alien connection. Maybe the Egyptians liked the Orion constellation for no good reason. Maybe the shafts in the Great Pyramids point towards the Orion Constellation (whose Belt they represent) and the other shafts in the other pyramids (if they exist) point towards the respective stars they represented in the night sky. In any case, it is the best theory I heard so far regarding the shafts and the reason they were built into the pyramids.
More like *sadistic* tendencies
on
ChronoSpace
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· Score: 1
So, basically, you suffered while reading the book and wanted to inflict a similar pain on others and that's why you had to review it on/.
That sounds more in line with sadism than masochism in my opinion.
I recognize the symptom - this is not unlike the way married people always try to fix others to get marred:)
Thanks for the European gastronomical overview, but you may have noticed that I was talking about Southern Europe. Chunks of greasy pork and dumps of potato are more the diet of the North - Austria, Hungary, Holland, etc. Ever heard of the Mediterranean cuisine? That is what we eat around here...
>But to claim that restaurant portions in Europe are smaller?
>I don't buy it, not for a second.
Suit yourself. I live in the South of France. Our meal is a big salad and a piece of 'entrecote'... or a bowl of pasta and a salad... or some other healthy stuff, the portions of which are significantly smaller than those in North America. One trip the the IHOP in Los Angeles, and the after-image of the plate they brought before me is burnt into my retina for all time - if you call that a one-person meal, you are probably four times my size.
I live in the South of France, and I am a girl who weighs 55 kg. and takes care of her body - so I just might know a little about the eating habits, the portions, and most of all, just how well-maintained the people are around here, since I see them barely clad in little swimming suits six months out of a year. Good for you if you are not completely ignorant about the cuisines of the world and can recite a few of their cherished meals, but the fact stands that America has a +60% overweight/obese population whereas this is not a problem in Europe, AND the number in Southern Europe is in single digits. I am telling you my observations as to why this is probably so... you do what you want with this information.
I remember hearing Julia Child saying that the reason obesity is becoming such a problem is because of fat has become taboo in cooking.
This is such crap. Obesity has become a problem in the US (65% fat or obese, right?) because you guys eat A LOT. I was astonished by the portions in the US that could feed 2-3 people with normal (unstretched) stomachs. (And don't even get me started on all the junk food most Americans munch on at various hours of the day.)
Go to a restaurant in Europe, and the portions are about a third of what they would be in America. What you eat is also very important, much more so possibly than the amount of oil you put in your food. Come to South of Europe and look around for a while. The normal everyday meal is a huge salad with a big chunk of meat or a bowl of pasta, fast food is a dying species, junk food consumption is very low, and obesity is so rare as to be statistically insignificant and would attract as many stares as a guy with two heads.
You suggest that American foreign policy is so nefarious, so wicked that two gigantic stuctures and thousands of innocent civilians should die as some sort of repayment.
Not at all. You are confusing causality with justification. I have said nothing about "deserving" anything.
You have asked where I am from - I am from a country that lost more than 10,000 of its people to terrorism. You do not need to tell me of funerals, crushed buildings, dismembered youths. I have seen them all.
So you have met terrorism for the first time. Well, congratulations. Some of us lived all our lives immersed in it. And guess who was financing the terrorists all along - US, UK, etc. But of course, they were "freedom fighters" then, not "terrorists".
I invite you to think on the possibility that if these people hate the US, they just might have a reason. And terrorism just might be the only way they can fight back. It is no secret that the US funded and trained Bin Ladin and his cavemen. So now the dog you trained and lashed on others turned to bite your own hand? The lesson is that such interventions as promoting religious fanaticism in a country to ward off their communist occupiers will have profound effects that might be undesirable for your country in the long term. Your country created Al-Qaeda. Now live with it.
Your reply tells me you are French ("how doing money"="comment faire l'argent"?). Perhaps someone who works in/with MandrakeSoft?
If your confidence in MandrakeSoft has any rational basis, then perhaps you should have shared it with us some months ago. Dunno... the management is a little confused there. They do not seem to know what a business plan is, nor why it is so important.
Look at the same point in context of WHO attacked who and your point suffers miserably...
Very true. In the same light, let's look at the issue at hand - Bin Ladin and his pyromaniac fremen did not just decide to set alight the World Trade Centers, you know. We take your advice, look at the context, and see that the reason why they are attacking the US might have something to do with the fact that their whole lives and those of their friends, family and everyone they have ever met has been affected for the worse because of American policies in the region where they live.
I look at the issue objectively, and this is what I see. Not that I care one bit for the Arabs and their "causes" to kill thousands of civilians. Neither do I care for Americans who had to kill thousands of Afghan civilians because they got hit by the terrorism they had been funding and lashing onto other nations for so long.
Sorry if this is a little harsh on the day of remembering the people who perished. I feel for them as I feel for the people of Hiroshima and Bosnia, as I feel for those who died in Nazi concentration camps. Still, you guys need to wake up from this "they are evil, we are good" crap and realize that it's your state's own clumsy meddling in international politics that turned to bite you this time. Yes, I agree completely that things need to be seen in their context. And this is the context created by the USA, with its merits and its perils.
The US financed Usama Bin Ladin and his organization Al-Qaeda, at times training them in US military bases, so that they would fight the Russians in the period when they were occupying Afghanistan.
This is not a conspiracy theory - it is an accepted fact. You don't have to trust me, better trust The Economist who said so in so many words some months ago. A simple search in their website should suffice to verify.
MandrakeSoft contacted us for financing some months ago, proposing a chunk of the company in exchange for a chunk of cash so that we would become significant shareholders.
We were interested until the moment we realized that, although possessing a good distro with a significant user base, MandrakeSoft would never be a successful company because it never had a business plan. (Pause here for a chuckle at the thought of "world class management team")
I have all the respect in the world for people who code/invent/create for the pleasure of that moment of coding/invention/creation and do not say that all such moments need be related to an eventual profitmaking plan. However, I do ask that from a company who asks us for millions with the promise of return in the (not so far) future.
This is where you will ask about the ingenious subscription/donation plan of MandrakeSoft. In my humble opinion as a financial investor, this revenue model will probably keep the company afloat, but will never make it a very profitable company, because the subscribers/donators are only agreeing to this because they wish to see MandrakeSoft survive, not to see it thrive! Once the company starts making a little profit, these revenues will stop. In short, with its current "business model" based on subscriptions/donations MandrakeSoft can and will probably be a non-profit organization that can cover its costs... maybe with tiny little profits if its supporters are feeling particularly generous that quarter.
RedHat entering the business desktop market is not good news for MandrakeSoft either - that is one market they could have earned real money from and now that chance is going... going... gone. How can they possibly compete? I have a company that already runs RedHat, who also provides me the service I need. Who am I going to choose for the desktops - RedHat or MandrakeSoft?
I hope MandrakeSoft survives. They do cool software. However, their story would make a brilliant Harvard Business Review and should be taught in schools to show the perils of going ahead with an idea without a thought of how you intend to eventually make money with it.
Slashdot Mirror
If the reward is a year in the future, it should be set at about (5*(1+1.5%)) = USD 5.075. That is called "time value of money" - i.e. USD 5 to be received a year in the future is not as valuable as USD 5 in your pocket here and now. The difference is what your USD 5 would grow to, given the current (admittedly pathetic) level of interest rates. Hate to see a fellow Slashdotter cheated...
We recently pulled away because while the current management can very well be geniuses in their fields, they are CLUELESS about management and PATHETICALLY CLUELESS about finance.
I cannot give specific examples, but suffice it to say that their marketing documents with which they sought investors to their recent (incomplete) capital increase was hilarious, and did not even have Balance Sheet projections. Their Income Statement projections are wrong - they say most of the USD 5 mn intended capital increase will go to hiring people, but salaries do NOT increase in the projections, for crying out loud!
I spoke many times to that "new CEO" you have high hopes about. He is clueless about how to make money with this company (sorry but that is the goal of an investment like the one we were contemplating). He does not have a business plan.
We actually suggested we could buy off the company from them - be majority shareholders, decide on a business plan, execute it. They refused.
How on earth did you "burn cereal"?
Please see reply above (#4615241). I would appreciate it if you could reply to it. Thanks in advance :)
I work in finance and I have a PC at work. I am thinking of the iBook for my personal use - I expect to do quite a bit of writing on it, work on photos, download music, burn cds, etc...
AppleWorks is a perfectly competent office application if you don't need all the features of Office
I will use iBook for personal stuff, but it would be nice to be able to work on it if and when necessary. Most files I create are .doc and .xls, but I do quite a bit of reading on .pdf and some on .ppt. Can I work with them all on iBook?
One last question: I kind of remember that compatibility issues were solved a way back, but is there any problem at all between documents saved in PC and Mac? Save in one, open in the other, etc?
Thanks for the help :)
The thing is, I do not know much about how important the differences are between Mac and PC. That's a risk for me.
I would appreciate it if you guys could comment on how difficult a defection to Apple could be for me.
You probably don't have many (if any at all) of the cells you had when you were born, so you've been mostly disintegrated many times, you just didn't notice it. Not sure if this is so significant in the problem of consciousness and its continuity, but after the age of 18 or so you do not make new brain cells.
Not a bad book at all, "Less Than Zero" :)
Does this mean now that those of us who subscribed to Mandrake Club will stop their donations?
I wonder why the latest "financial results" of Mandrakesoft show just the revenues... What about cots? and (God forbid) maybe even profits?
Not so sure about that. Redheads' (and light blonds') inability to tan has more to do with their lack of melatonin - the stuff that makes your skin go dark. I don't think low melatonin (or lack thereof) has anything to do with nerve endings or them being closer to the surface, which in my mind would more closely be associated with higher sensitivity to pain.
For God's sake...
I think you are pushing it a little. Your theory does not explain my case at all, nor why my brother has perfect eyesight and you are stipulating I might be traumatized by too much love as a child (for god's sake) rather than accept there might be a problem with your theory.
I have have never lived in the US and hence was not exposed to the sort of life you are describing. My brother, however, studied in UPENN, worked in Manhattan for two years, and is now doing his MBA in Harvard. If anyone is subjected to the difficulties in American way of life, I guess he is.
He has perfect sight in both eyes.
The difference between me and my brother, in my humble opinion, is that I was reading encyclopedias as a child, while his interests were more in the "lego" domain :)
I have been wearing contact lenses since the age of 8, and by now, I don't really think of it as a drag. Still, I am curious about this ortho-k thing.
Please... Is this for real? Are you asking /. to trust and believe this voodoo crap, putting aside all we know about myopia being the result of the shape of the eye (too long or too short)?
OK, I find interesting, and even credible, the theory that myopia is caused by muscle tension, after all, it does not seem impossible that tense muscles could eventually change the shape of the eye. (high correlation between obsessive reading and bad eyesight comes to mind). However, I will put a bullet through my rational brain before I entertain the thought that my myopia that started at the age of 7 was caused by an excessively tense lifestyle in elementary school! :)
Just curious: Could you explain how older people's eyesight deteriorate? Is that due to higher stress levels after a certain age? And how about near-sighted children? Too much stress in kindergarten?
Not necessarily true. There have been numerous times in history when "a mass of people" supported certain views for no good reason whatsoever.
Example: Witch hunts of the Middle Ages. Everybody believed in witches and lonely women with moles on their faces and an effection for cats were burnt alive by the thousands. Did the fact that "a mass of people" believed there were witches around to be lit afire made their view correct or even rational? Nope.
It is sad but true - in many instances, masses of people follow leaders who are not the most open-minded and rational people on the planet. They believe, because they do not know any better.
The book first juxtaposes our view of the sky with the map of Egypt, positioning the Milky Way over the river Nile. Interesting to see is that the three great pyramids coincide with the three stars in the "belt" in the Orion - remember how the two pyramids are aligned but the third is slightly off? Well, so are the stars in Orion's Belt. Another interesting point is that how so many of the pyramids (you know there are MANY of them) coincide with the stars on the map.
So it seems that the Egyptians positioned the pyramids to represent stars in the night sky.
Now the shafts - If we look at a cross-section of the pyramids at the shafts, they originate at the pharoah's chamber and go out towards the sky. The book goes on to show the studies that suggest that at the time when those pyramids and hence the shafts were constructed, the Orion constellation was at that angle.
If this theory is correct, than it seems the shafts in the pyramids are meant to give way to the soul of the deceased towards the Orion constellation.
The book was titled "The Orion Mystery" and the author is Robert Bauval. Neither this book nor I intend to make any alien connection. Maybe the Egyptians liked the Orion constellation for no good reason. Maybe the shafts in the Great Pyramids point towards the Orion Constellation (whose Belt they represent) and the other shafts in the other pyramids (if they exist) point towards the respective stars they represented in the night sky. In any case, it is the best theory I heard so far regarding the shafts and the reason they were built into the pyramids.
That sounds more in line with sadism than masochism in my opinion.
I recognize the symptom - this is not unlike the way married people always try to fix others to get marred :)
>But to claim that restaurant portions in Europe are smaller?
>I don't buy it, not for a second.
Suit yourself. I live in the South of France. Our meal is a big salad and a piece of 'entrecote'... or a bowl of pasta and a salad... or some other healthy stuff, the portions of which are significantly smaller than those in North America. One trip the the IHOP in Los Angeles, and the after-image of the plate they brought before me is burnt into my retina for all time - if you call that a one-person meal, you are probably four times my size.
I live in the South of France, and I am a girl who weighs 55 kg. and takes care of her body - so I just might know a little about the eating habits, the portions, and most of all, just how well-maintained the people are around here, since I see them barely clad in little swimming suits six months out of a year. Good for you if you are not completely ignorant about the cuisines of the world and can recite a few of their cherished meals, but the fact stands that America has a +60% overweight/obese population whereas this is not a problem in Europe, AND the number in Southern Europe is in single digits. I am telling you my observations as to why this is probably so... you do what you want with this information.
This is such crap. Obesity has become a problem in the US (65% fat or obese, right?) because you guys eat A LOT. I was astonished by the portions in the US that could feed 2-3 people with normal (unstretched) stomachs. (And don't even get me started on all the junk food most Americans munch on at various hours of the day.)
Go to a restaurant in Europe, and the portions are about a third of what they would be in America. What you eat is also very important, much more so possibly than the amount of oil you put in your food. Come to South of Europe and look around for a while. The normal everyday meal is a huge salad with a big chunk of meat or a bowl of pasta, fast food is a dying species, junk food consumption is very low, and obesity is so rare as to be statistically insignificant and would attract as many stares as a guy with two heads.
Not at all. You are confusing causality with justification. I have said nothing about "deserving" anything.
You have asked where I am from - I am from a country that lost more than 10,000 of its people to terrorism. You do not need to tell me of funerals, crushed buildings, dismembered youths. I have seen them all.
So you have met terrorism for the first time. Well, congratulations. Some of us lived all our lives immersed in it. And guess who was financing the terrorists all along - US, UK, etc. But of course, they were "freedom fighters" then, not "terrorists".
I invite you to think on the possibility that if these people hate the US, they just might have a reason. And terrorism just might be the only way they can fight back. It is no secret that the US funded and trained Bin Ladin and his cavemen. So now the dog you trained and lashed on others turned to bite your own hand? The lesson is that such interventions as promoting religious fanaticism in a country to ward off their communist occupiers will have profound effects that might be undesirable for your country in the long term. Your country created Al-Qaeda. Now live with it.
If your confidence in MandrakeSoft has any rational basis, then perhaps you should have shared it with us some months ago. Dunno... the management is a little confused there. They do not seem to know what a business plan is, nor why it is so important.
Very true. In the same light, let's look at the issue at hand - Bin Ladin and his pyromaniac fremen did not just decide to set alight the World Trade Centers, you know. We take your advice, look at the context, and see that the reason why they are attacking the US might have something to do with the fact that their whole lives and those of their friends, family and everyone they have ever met has been affected for the worse because of American policies in the region where they live.
I look at the issue objectively, and this is what I see. Not that I care one bit for the Arabs and their "causes" to kill thousands of civilians. Neither do I care for Americans who had to kill thousands of Afghan civilians because they got hit by the terrorism they had been funding and lashing onto other nations for so long.
Sorry if this is a little harsh on the day of remembering the people who perished. I feel for them as I feel for the people of Hiroshima and Bosnia, as I feel for those who died in Nazi concentration camps. Still, you guys need to wake up from this "they are evil, we are good" crap and realize that it's your state's own clumsy meddling in international politics that turned to bite you this time. Yes, I agree completely that things need to be seen in their context. And this is the context created by the USA, with its merits and its perils.
The US financed Usama Bin Ladin and his organization Al-Qaeda, at times training them in US military bases, so that they would fight the Russians in the period when they were occupying Afghanistan.
This is not a conspiracy theory - it is an accepted fact. You don't have to trust me, better trust The Economist who said so in so many words some months ago. A simple search in their website should suffice to verify.
Live with it.
We were interested until the moment we realized that, although possessing a good distro with a significant user base, MandrakeSoft would never be a successful company because it never had a business plan. (Pause here for a chuckle at the thought of "world class management team")
I have all the respect in the world for people who code/invent/create for the pleasure of that moment of coding/invention/creation and do not say that all such moments need be related to an eventual profitmaking plan. However, I do ask that from a company who asks us for millions with the promise of return in the (not so far) future.
This is where you will ask about the ingenious subscription/donation plan of MandrakeSoft. In my humble opinion as a financial investor, this revenue model will probably keep the company afloat, but will never make it a very profitable company, because the subscribers/donators are only agreeing to this because they wish to see MandrakeSoft survive, not to see it thrive! Once the company starts making a little profit, these revenues will stop. In short, with its current "business model" based on subscriptions/donations MandrakeSoft can and will probably be a non-profit organization that can cover its costs... maybe with tiny little profits if its supporters are feeling particularly generous that quarter.
RedHat entering the business desktop market is not good news for MandrakeSoft either - that is one market they could have earned real money from and now that chance is going... going... gone. How can they possibly compete? I have a company that already runs RedHat, who also provides me the service I need. Who am I going to choose for the desktops - RedHat or MandrakeSoft?
I hope MandrakeSoft survives. They do cool software. However, their story would make a brilliant Harvard Business Review and should be taught in schools to show the perils of going ahead with an idea without a thought of how you intend to eventually make money with it.